2. Char
CHAR
I didn’t remember the walk. I didn’t remember leaving the bedroom door wide open behind me. Hell, I didn’t even remember crawling into bed and climbing beneath the covers. All I knew was the familiar sensation of hot tears streaking down my cheeks as I pulled a comforter over my head.
I wanted to bury myself in that mattress and never come back up.
I’d never felt so unhinged before. So… at risk. So worried over something that I couldn’t even see. Not even my father put me in this kind of danger before. Sure, he was a drug addict and a dealer, but it was different. This was different.
Maybe.
I don’t know anymore.
“Wanna talk?” Gauge asked.
I should’ve known one of them would follow me. “No.”
I sniffled, wiping at the itchy tear that tickled the edge of my nose, and before I could say anything, the covers flew up.
A presence slammed in beside me. The warmth of Gauge’s body stole my breath away as he snaked his massive arm around my waist and tugged me close.
The comforter fluttered back down over both of us.
His hand splayed across what felt like my entire stomach, encompassing me as tears threatened to drown my neck.
I couldn’t hold back my sobs as I turned toward the swell of his chest.
“I can’t do this anymore,” I choked out.
Racking sobs hiccupped my shoulders. Snot clogged my nostrils.
Everything slammed into me at once and I found it hard to catch my breath.
I couldn’t even decipher the sweet little nothings Gauge whispered as he held me against him.
His hand, stroking the knots out of my hair as I drenched his shirt with my sorrows.
I wondered what M.J. and DeShawn were doing.
How they were enjoying their vacation. God, I wanted to be with them so badly.
I wondered about the guys and thought about everything swirling around them ever since they bought out Miss Lilly’s bar.
It felt like a lifetime ago. Miss Lilly disappeared as if we meant nothing to her.
As if the money was more important than the patchwork family she pieced together in that place, and I felt abandoned.
Loved and abandoned all at once.
“I’m so fucking tired of crying,” I hissed.
“I’ve gotcha,” Gauge murmured, “just let it out. You have to get it out, angel.”
“O-o-o-oh, muh-my—my God,” I choked out through my sobbing.
I hated crying. I’d done so much of it over the course of my life that I could’ve had my tear ducts professionally removed and not given one single shit about it.
Crying hurt. It hurt my chest, and it constricted my throat, and I couldn’t breathe, and I couldn’t talk.
It shut down everything, and I hated feeling so fucking out of control. So helpless. So useless.
I would’ve given anything to hear my mother’s voice.
“Gauge?” I asked through my broken breath.
He crooked his finger beneath my chin and lifted my puffy gaze. “Yes, angel?”
I waited until my breathing was even again before I spoke. “Is there a safe cell that I can use?”
He shook his head. “No, there isn’t.”
“Just for a little bit?”
He wiped a stray tear off my cheek with his thumb. “We can’t risk nonessential communication right now.”
I scooted back from him a bit. “It’s essential to me.”
“There isn’t one. There isn’t even one we can create. Everything we do from here on out has to be tactical.”
“Why?” I asked. “I mean, the plan was to draw her in, right? I mean, it wasn’t as if we weren’t just firing off half a dozen rifles or whatever.”
“That was different. We discussed it as a group and?—”
I lifted up as my voice grew harsh. “Then go have another pow-wow with the other dick slingers in this house and find me a phone that I can use.”
He slowly lifted from the mattress as well, his gaze never wavering from mine. “Angel, I know you’re upset right now?—”
“When have I ever asked for anything, Gauge?”
He sighed heavily. “It’s not about asking or not asking. We’re?—”
I cut him off with a sharp look. “You don’t get to tell me that the plan is to draw her in, and then continue to cut me off from the outside world. All I ask for is one phone call. It won’t even take two minutes.”
“We’re already looking into her, angel. Plug’s been on it since last night.” He scrubbed a hand down his face. “Two minutes is a hell of a long time in that world.”
“Then put Plug on the fucking job and let’s get at it.”
“Char—”
I slipped out of bed, away from his outstretched arm. “This could be another way to draw her in, and it won’t compromise anything in the process. It’s not like I’m calling M.J. or DeShawn to have a gossip session or anything.”
“Who are you calling, then?”
I blinked. “None of your fucking business, that’s what.”
His face darkened. “Until you’re no longer at risk or under our care, it’s one hundred percent our business.”
I put on my best mocking voice. “Even if it puts me in daaaaaanger?”
I knew my anger got the better of me, but I didn’t give a single flying fuck in the entire world. I needed my mother’s voice. Not wanted. Not ‘I’d really like it.’ But need. It was the difference between me keeping a cool head and me giving up.
And I needed to stay strong for the people around me.
“Char,” Gauge said as his voice hardened, “we have no clue what that woman is after. She’s from your past, and you’re the only one who’s had any direct contact with her.
That’s fucking massive, you get that, right?
Up until this point, all of us have been chasing ghosts.
You’re the only person who had any idea what was happening, or had any kind of contact with her, or what she looked like.
Jesus fuck, Char, for all we know she could be a dirty federal agent on a personal mission with you in her crosshairs! ”
I studied his red face. His flaring nostrils. His fists, balled up at his sides.
“That’s what you think, isn’t it?” I asked.
His hands covered his face before he slid them down, as if trying to drag his facial expressions with him.
But his answer didn’t require words, because as his gaze settled on me again, the worry was prevalent.
Etched all over his face, like one of those Etch A Sketch things my father bought me when I was a little girl.
One of the few presents he ever bought for me with that drug money of his.
“I just wanna talk to my mom, Gauge,” I whispered. “Can’t you just give me that?”
He swallowed hard before he drew in a deep breath. “I’ll be right back.”
I stood there, unflinching until he came back with something that looked more like a rock than a phone.
The damned thing was ancient, and I watched as he ripped the new phone out of the plastic pack as if it were wrapped in paper.
I watched him piece the phone together, slipping the battery into the back and slamming the cover onto it.
The screen lit up as he turned it on, and after pressing a few buttons he turned the face of a Nokia phone toward me.
“I can’t give you long,” he said with sorrow lacing his words, “but, I’ll give you as long as I can.”
I reached over the bed and took it from him. “Thanks.”
And after crawling back onto the mattress, I curled up with a pillow against my stomach.
I dialed my mother’s number that I had long since memorized.
“Hi there! You’ve reached the voice mailbox of Diana Lancaster. I can’t come to the phone right now, but if you leave your name, number, and a brief message after the tone, I’ll see what I can do after I figure out whether or not I want to listen to it.”
Tears crested my eyes as her voice filled my ears, and by the time the beep sounded, I’d completely forgotten where I was.
“Oh, Mom,” I choked out as tears spilled toward my lap, “things are so bad. They’re just… they’re bad all the time, a-a-and?—”
Breathing became laborious as my nose plugged itself up again.
“Remember the woman from that day? She, uh, she’s—I wish you were here.
You’d remember so much more about that day than me.
I was so scared. So angry. And so… relieved, that he was gone.
That he’d be gone. That woman, she talked me through everything.
How the trial would go. What to say. What not to say.
She kept me levelheaded, and sane. She brought me suckers and popsicles, and sat with me through every fucking day of that goddamn trial. ”
I held the pillow close as I gathered myself.
“Why is she trying to ruin my life, Mom? I mean, I know I’ve never made the best decisions.
Not finishing high school, not keeping up with friends, not thinking about a future.
But I’m doing that now. I’ve—I’ve got friends, and a place to call home again.
I’ve got people in my life who care. I’ve got men who?—”
I closed my eyes and heaved a sigh so heavy that I thought my lungs would sink into my stomach with the lead they seemed to be filled with.
“Why is she doing this? Why is she trying to hurt me now? Why is she—why is she here? Why won’t she leave me alone?
You’d know what to do. I miss you so much.
You’d know what to do, and you’d have a plan of action.
You were always so good with those, and I don’t know why she won’t just leave me alone.
Why can’t I just live my life? It took me so long, Mommy.
It took so long for me to find this life.
For me to find a reason to smile in the mornings.
Why is she trying to take that from me?”
“To repeat this message, press one. To send this message, press two. To hear all other opti?—”
“God fucking damn it!” I roared.
And as I threw the phone against the opposing wall, I heard the plastic case splinter before it fell to the ground in chunks.
“Guess that’s one way to dispose of it,” Gauge murmured.
I hunkered back down into the sheets and covered my head so that my tears would no longer be judged.